APOLLO 8The Second Mission:Testing the CSM in Lunar Orbit21 December–27 December 1968

Four recoverable film camera capsules were carried
aboard the S-IC stage. Two were located in the forward interstage looking
forward to view S-IC/S-II separation and S-II engine start. The other two
were mounted on top of the S-IC stage LOX tank and contained pulse cameras
which viewed aft into the LOX tank through fiber optics bundles. One of
the LOX tank capsules was recovered by helicopter at 00:19:30 at latitude
30.22° north and longitude 73.97° west. Despite film damage caused
by sea water and dye marker which had leaked into the camera compartment,
the film provided usable data. It was not known if the other three capsules
were ejected. There were also two television cameras on the S-IC to view
propulsion and control system components. Both provided good quality data.

Neil Armstrong reads the plaque on the ladder
of the LM – a Polaroidphoto of the TV picture received by the Parkes
Radio Telescope. Notethe uniformly bright, detailed picture, including
the reflection of Neiland the LM in Buzz Aldrin’s visor (center).Right:
A frame of the official NASA recording, after the TV had beenprocessed
and relayed to Houston. This is what the world saw.

Richard Hess linked to a report from this site on July
14th. I couldn't get that link to work. But there is an alternate
link provided on an associated page.It looks
as if my assumption was correct, the Apollo moon landing tapes were sent
to NARA's Federal Records Center in 1970, then called back by NASA some
time beween 1975-1979, when NASA pulled back almost all of a large series
of records. The moon tapes should have gone back to the FRC and eventually
been accessioned into NARA as "Permanent," but this never happened.

I'm still downloading it now; it's a large file and
I only have dial-up. If I have any further observations, I'll send
'em along.It would have been much safer for
the tapes to have remained at the FRC, you can see they have good item
control over such materials when they are held in NARA facilities.

Maarja

Accession 255-69A4099..

Update: Apollo 11 Tapes08.15.06

Jason TownsendNASA Goddard Space Flight Center

NASA personnel continue to sift
through 37-year-old records in their attempt to locate the magnetic tapes
that recorded the original Apollo 11 video in 1969. The original tapes
may be at the Goddard Space Flight Center, which requested their return
from the National Archives in the 1970s, or at another location within
the NASA archiving system. Despite the challenges of the search, NASA does
not consider the tapes to be lost.

The tapes were sent from Goddard
to a storage facility of the National Archives in late 1969. This kind
of transfer is standard for government records, whether contracts, memos,
photographs or space telemetry. Among the 2,614 boxes of Apollo mission
tapes that went to the facility, the original Apollo 11 may have been among
them. Between 1975 and 1979, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center recalled
all but two of the 2,614 boxes. The remaining two boxes included telemetry
tapes from Apollo 9, leading engineers to believe that these shipments
contained most of the Apollo related materials.

..

The machines pictured read the
1-inch-wide magnetic data tape from their 14-inch round reels. Multiple
machines are used because each reel only records about 15 minutes worth
of data. As one reel fills, the next machine automatically starts recording
a slight overlap for data continuity. Credit: NASA.

First-generation copies of the
converted video from Apollo 11 as well as other first-generation copies
and some original versions of the converted video for the Apollo 12 through
Apollo 17 flights are still in NASA Johnson Space Center's Informational
Resources Directorate's video vault in Houston.

About 18 months ago, NASA Goddard
began an informal search for the tapes after some inquiries from retirees
from the space agency and others from the Apollo program. NASA engineers
are hopeful that when the tapes are found, they can use today's digital
technology to provide a version of the moonwalk that is much better quality
than what we have today. Goddard engineers were able to extract data from
a nearly-identical type of tape recorded in 1969 of an Apollo simulation
from the Honeysuckle Creek, Australia tracking station providing optimism
that when the tapes are located, we can preserve original video.

..

Pictured on the small screen
in this image is sample raw data from a magnetic data tape before being
split out into the various video, telemetry, biomedical sensor, and voice
communications between the spacecraft and the Earth. Credit: NASA.

In the event the tapes are found,
NASA Goddard is taking steps to make sure all the unique hardware required
to process the Apollo 11 moonwalk tapes is still around and can be used
to make digital reproductions of the tapes that will be kept with the NASA
History Office to make sure the video is protected and restored as needed.

NASA has also asked that any
paperwork related to the transfer of the tapes from the National Records
Center to NASA Goddard and paperwork related to the NASA Johnson Space
Center's transfer of tapes to the National Archives be preserved and digitized
to prevent further deterioration of these historical records.

Because of power limitations,
Apollo 11 used specially developed slow-scan video that had to be converted
into a format that could be broadcast over commercial television. The original
signal was transmitted at 10 frames per second and had to be converted
to 60 frames per second to be viewed on your TV set.

..

Pictured is the side of a blank
Tape Container box. Boxes like these likely contain the tapes in question
and have tracking information filled out on the label from when they were
initially sent to the National Records Center. Each box can contain up
to five data tapes. Credit: NASA.

The signal originated on the
Moon, traveled through the emptiness of space back to Earth, and was received
by tracking stations on the ground in Goldstone, California; Parkes, Australia;
and Honeysuckle Creek, Australia. These three tracking stations recorded
the original signal that included the television video, as well as voice,
telemetry, and biomedical data. The data was recorded onto magnetic tapes,
and simultaneously converted into a U.S. broadcast format for transmission
to Houston and final release to U.S. television networks. The equipment
used to convert the signal unfortunately caused some unavoidable loss of
image quality.

35 Years Ago, "One Small Step..." ( 0.4
Mb PDF ), which is an account of RCA engineer Jack Yanosov and the
development of the PLSS radio unit. John Dilks (K2TQN), QST, February 2005.
Document courtesy Maty Weinberg, ARRL (American Radio Relay League):The
National Association for Amateur Radio. Used with permission.

Comparison photographs the Apollo 11 Lunar Television
as seen at Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek, and Houston ( 4.4
Mb ); Colin Mackellar, Editor of the Honeysuckle Creek website,
December 2005. Used with permission.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted
material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright
owner. Pegasus Research Consortium distributes this material without profit
to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included
information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes
a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C
§ 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for
purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission
from the copyright owner.